Japan

Organized Panel Session

(2) - Making Borders of the Foreign Students in Japan: “Ryūgakusei” as Students, Workers or Migrants?

This paper examines the different meanings of the category “ryūgakusei” or foreign students in Japan, and as such elucidates how the borders encompassing this category are being constructed, reproduced and challenged. On one hand, ryūgakusei is one of the few officially allowed and praised forms of mobility which has been recently acknowledged by the policy makers as potential source of the much-needed labor force, particularly the “kōdō jinzai” (high-skilled workers) one. Yet, on the other hand, foreign students have been associated with more negative or exclusionary labels in the case of providing the back-doors for the “hijukuren rōdōsha” (low-skilled workers) or as “imin” (immigrants) highlight, inter alia, their temporality and rather negative connotations. Analyzing such labels and their relationship to the ryūgakusei reveals its complex meanings with both inclusive and exclusive aspects.

What this term entails and how it is delimited is further explored through the experience of foreign students in Japan and their understanding of themselves as being ryūgakusei in Japan. How they position themselves within the local settings, as students, and in the wider settings of Japanese society? How they cope with such positions and how they relate themselves to Japan in their plans after graduation? How are these perceptions, as well as the meanings of ryūgakusei and their expected positions within receiving society shaped by institutional factors, race, class or gender? These questions are explored by analyzing semi-structed interviews with foreign students of various backgrounds and studying in different forms at a university in Western Japan.

Speaker(s)

• MD

  MIlos Debnar

  Ryukoku University, Japan